A Religious Encounter in Roskilde Museum
By Paulina Gretkierewicz
I love religious art. I grew up going to church with my family every Sunday. I come from Poland, the country that is not only very catholic but also grossly fetishizes religious depictions. In November of 2010, a 53 meters tall statue of Christ the King was built in a small Polish town of Świebodzin. It is the tallest statue of Jesus in the world, bigger even than the famous Cristo Redentor looking over Rio de Janerio – beating it mostly by a 3 meters high, golden-painted crown on its head. In April 2016, the Polish government officially crowned Our Lord Jesus Christ to be the king of Poland following the vote in the parliament. I, myself, have been surrounded by Jesus my entire life and did not think much of it.
I am here, on the 2nd floor of Roskilde Museum. The exhibition room I am in is green. It smells like, what I identify as some sort of cleaning solution. We came in to the museum today, mostly, to look at the artefacts from the local mosque. I have my own secret agenda – I came here to find Jesus.
On the left side of the room, squeezed in the corner, there are two wooden sculptures. I approach them, stand in front, and let myself feel intimidated. They are old. One of them hangs on the cross. The other one is simply hanging in the crucified position, the cross behind him long gone, as I read from the description. I can see leftovers of flesh-colored paint on their torsos. Not much, just enough to see that both sculptures, even though now almost all brown and grey, used to be bright pink. Strokes of painted blood sipping from their wooden wounds, a bit of blue trailing where the lines of veins used to flow on their chests. That blood used to be crimson red. I touch the one on the cross, even though I probably should not do that, I cannot help myself.
The room is occupied by the display of the illuminating cross – screaming church bells every time somebody passes the motion detector at the center. Reminding visitors where we all are. Two boys running towards it, again and again, to wake it up. The sound of bells is loud and the bright explosion of white light behind me is distracting. I realize I become annoyed, but nobody else seems to be. The Polish in me, the one raised by my catholic family, feels outraged. The way those sculptures hang makes me uncomfortable. They seem almost neglected in the corner of the room, run over by kids and left here to be touched by anyone who wishes to do so. I start wondering why they are not displayed in some more significant space in the museum.
For me those Jesuses seem out of context now. Stripped from their sacred position in the middle of the church altar, they seem almost vulnerable. I used to see those sculptures adored by old Polish ladies decorating them with flowers, priests kissing their feet at Great Friday celebrations in the church, I was taught to bow every time I had to pass one by my grandfather. We Poles take Jesus seriously.
So even in the noise surrounding me, and the running, and the stripping of the son of God from 800 years of paint, and his context, I still am intimidated. And almost profoundly moved. I leave the museum with the feeling that I was the only one recognizing the beauty in those two naked men hanging in the corner of the museum.